"What would it be like if you lived each day, each breath, as a work of art in progress? Imagine that you are a masterpiece unfolding every second of every day, a work of art taking form with every breath."——Thomas Crum
When I saw this quote in a recent issue of "Pause for Beauty," the online newsletter from Heron Dance, I felt that the same words could be written about the creation of a novel.
Needless to say, both lives and novels have deadlines that are hard to put on hold while the world or the words unfold at an unhurried pace.
We worry about outcomes so much that it's often difficult to see where we are while we're doing the worrying. In a sense, we want to rush ahead to Hallowe'en or to Thanksgiving or to Chrismas, or the new year. Likewise, we often want to simply get the book done so that it can be out the door and we can move onto something else.
There's an aspect of our lives and our work that unfolds in a very natural way, some say like the bud of an unfolding rose. Everything it touches--from novels to Thanksgiving dinners--becomes richer and more meaningful if we can step back from time to time and allow simply allow it to happen without our obsessive tinkering with it.
Friday, October 27, 2006
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Morning Has Broken
The word "morning" appears in The Sun Singer 55 times. I use the word "dawn" another 23 times. While there are practical reasons for using these words, there are also symbolic reasons.
Morning not only signifies the start of a new day, but new beginnings as well. The primary theme of The Sun Singer is the spiritual transformation that a hero undergoes as a result of undertaking a dangerous quest. So I am drawn to mornings and sunrises.
Last week, author Philip Lee Williams (A Distant Flame) did a reading at my local public library from his new nonfiction book In the Morning. Written from the viewpoint of a "morning person," the book celebrates the break of day in clear, often-poetic prose.
Aptly, the first chapter is called "First Things," and there Williams writes "Each day the world yawns with light as the planet comes out of its spin away from the sun. It heralds the wedding day of two lovers, the funeral of a beloved father or mother, the hope of good news, the punishment of a hangover, or the start of a journey. And yet morning has few books all its own."
Poets, novelists, songwriters and orators often speak highly or morning to the point of near worship. Morning, I think, holds enough promise to merit an entire book. With my love or morning and its symbolic connotations, I am already enjoying Williams book, subtitled "Reflections from First Light."
You can learn more about the book on William's website.
Morning not only signifies the start of a new day, but new beginnings as well. The primary theme of The Sun Singer is the spiritual transformation that a hero undergoes as a result of undertaking a dangerous quest. So I am drawn to mornings and sunrises.
Last week, author Philip Lee Williams (A Distant Flame) did a reading at my local public library from his new nonfiction book In the Morning. Written from the viewpoint of a "morning person," the book celebrates the break of day in clear, often-poetic prose.
Aptly, the first chapter is called "First Things," and there Williams writes "Each day the world yawns with light as the planet comes out of its spin away from the sun. It heralds the wedding day of two lovers, the funeral of a beloved father or mother, the hope of good news, the punishment of a hangover, or the start of a journey. And yet morning has few books all its own."
Poets, novelists, songwriters and orators often speak highly or morning to the point of near worship. Morning, I think, holds enough promise to merit an entire book. With my love or morning and its symbolic connotations, I am already enjoying Williams book, subtitled "Reflections from First Light."
You can learn more about the book on William's website.
Monday, October 23, 2006
Brief Excerpts from 'The Sun Singer'
She had appeared about 3:18 p.m. alongside the driveway where the buses were loading and said, “Robert, I’m so sorry about your grandfather.”
As she said his name, she rested the ring finger, middle finger and index finger of her left hand on his arm about an inch from his elbow. The pink nail polish matched her pink eye shadow and sweater, exactly.
“Thanks, Sylvia,” he said, and she smiled and she didn’t look away for a year, and then she said, “I gotta go” and stepped inside the No. 32 bus just before the door closed. Her fingers were softer than he expected and more electric.
-
The stone walls on either side of the cold passageway rise up toward a dark, faraway ceiling. The floor is wet and slippery. As he walks, small iron doors materialize; through them, he hears breathing and odd voices. The light is fading. He can’t breathe. Close at hand, a muffled scream goes all through him, and then a whisper, saying, saying, he is straining to hear it, “It’s a girl, poor woman, in this place far from the sun’s reach.” When he tries to run, he falls.
-
He stands in a dark room and looks out a door at a sky as flat black and blank as a new writing slate. The view has no form and no dimension. The room’s features are also obscured. No lamps have been lighted. Somewhere behind him or within him the steady tick of a clock or a heart brings order without comfort.
A sound creeps into his loneliness—as hollow and faraway as the sea in a shell or words whispered on a mountaintop. Like an incoming tide, a blue wave flows across the void, producing before his eyes a soft, three-dimensional evening. Mountains and trees appear slowly, from the ground up, as though an unseen being molds them from twilight stuff.
Approaching the door, he discovers that the valley holds a lake, brilliant as quicksilver beneath the rising moon. A tall, white-haired man stands beside the lake, contemplating the shadows and cliffs on the far shore. The smoke from his pipe drifts lazily out over the water. He turns and looks straight at Robert. The gray eyes, the tilt of the head, the hand brushing the chin—these are unmistakable. “Grandfather!”
The old man walks toward the door and Robert rushes to meet him but when his foot touches the threshold a searing flash of blue-white light repulses him. A whirlwind of white fire spins in the doorway. He falls back, cracking his right elbow when he hits the floor. The whirlwind howls and Robert’s ears are filled with a cry as chill-cold and eerie as the wail of the last animal of a species.
The whirlwind’s arms and hands are liquid flame and they shoot across the room like spewing lava. Fingers, bony and hot, grasp his neck, crush his throat, and steal his breath. Consumed by anger, he fights back, but his fists uselessly punch through heat. He jams his left foot against a table, pushes hard, and rolls away from the fiery being in the twilight door.
The flames follow. He screams as light obliterates all shadows. His clothes are burning. Hands grab his shoulders and shake him violently. He resists and their grip tightens.
Copyright (C) 2004, by Malcolm R. Campbell
As she said his name, she rested the ring finger, middle finger and index finger of her left hand on his arm about an inch from his elbow. The pink nail polish matched her pink eye shadow and sweater, exactly.
“Thanks, Sylvia,” he said, and she smiled and she didn’t look away for a year, and then she said, “I gotta go” and stepped inside the No. 32 bus just before the door closed. Her fingers were softer than he expected and more electric.
-
The stone walls on either side of the cold passageway rise up toward a dark, faraway ceiling. The floor is wet and slippery. As he walks, small iron doors materialize; through them, he hears breathing and odd voices. The light is fading. He can’t breathe. Close at hand, a muffled scream goes all through him, and then a whisper, saying, saying, he is straining to hear it, “It’s a girl, poor woman, in this place far from the sun’s reach.” When he tries to run, he falls.
-
He stands in a dark room and looks out a door at a sky as flat black and blank as a new writing slate. The view has no form and no dimension. The room’s features are also obscured. No lamps have been lighted. Somewhere behind him or within him the steady tick of a clock or a heart brings order without comfort.
A sound creeps into his loneliness—as hollow and faraway as the sea in a shell or words whispered on a mountaintop. Like an incoming tide, a blue wave flows across the void, producing before his eyes a soft, three-dimensional evening. Mountains and trees appear slowly, from the ground up, as though an unseen being molds them from twilight stuff.
Approaching the door, he discovers that the valley holds a lake, brilliant as quicksilver beneath the rising moon. A tall, white-haired man stands beside the lake, contemplating the shadows and cliffs on the far shore. The smoke from his pipe drifts lazily out over the water. He turns and looks straight at Robert. The gray eyes, the tilt of the head, the hand brushing the chin—these are unmistakable. “Grandfather!”
The old man walks toward the door and Robert rushes to meet him but when his foot touches the threshold a searing flash of blue-white light repulses him. A whirlwind of white fire spins in the doorway. He falls back, cracking his right elbow when he hits the floor. The whirlwind howls and Robert’s ears are filled with a cry as chill-cold and eerie as the wail of the last animal of a species.
The whirlwind’s arms and hands are liquid flame and they shoot across the room like spewing lava. Fingers, bony and hot, grasp his neck, crush his throat, and steal his breath. Consumed by anger, he fights back, but his fists uselessly punch through heat. He jams his left foot against a table, pushes hard, and rolls away from the fiery being in the twilight door.
The flames follow. He screams as light obliterates all shadows. His clothes are burning. Hands grab his shoulders and shake him violently. He resists and their grip tightens.
Copyright (C) 2004, by Malcolm R. Campbell
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Snail's Pace Writing
When The Sun Singer was published by iUniverse in 2004 as a print-on-demand book, the 130,000-word story of mountains, magic and transformation was over 20 years old.
No fan of deadlines, I began part-time work on the novel while employed as a technical writer at a widely known computer company. The words came slowly even after that company was bought out and my division was closed.
I then went to work as a technical writer for a new computer company that stayed in business for a little over a year before it was taken over by venture capitalists and subsequently closed. Meanwhile, I was still following my protagonist, young Robert Adams, from Illinois out to the high country of Montana as he searched for new answers to old questions.
Ultimately--after doing computer work out of my house for a while--I landed at another computer company while Robert Adams was fighting bad guys in a faraway world of magic.
This company lasted about five years. But it fell on hard times and was closed down while Robert Adams was discovering his own true nature. His journey represented continuity--from a writer's point of view--and it became clear that my snail's pace writing was intentional in a therapeutic way as fortunes and finances in the real world ebbed and flowed.
Fortunately or unfortunately, I was hired by another computer company and told as I walked in the door that anyone who had seen as many computer companies fail as I had obviously had the kind of experience they were looking for. My division was phased out 365 days later due to the usual business turn-arounds and other factors.
The time was right to polish up the novel again and send it out the door. Over a 20-year period, some 120 publishers and agents had told me that they didn't know how to market an adult-level novel with a teenage protagonist. Actually, I don't either. And it doesn't matter because the 1981-2004 phase of my therapy was complete.
Now, as I near the end of a 200,000-word second novel, one that I began in 1990, I'm discovering there's more to this snail's pace form of therapeutic writing than I realized as the first copies of The Sun Singer arrived on my doorstep: The novel itself is not the true intent of my labor; it's a byproduct of my on-going discovery of self.
That is to say, when I begin a novel, I don't yet know enough to complete it. I know where it's going, but not how it will get there. While I would very much like to write at rabbit speed or even race horse speed, my inner work won't permit it. The writing is always a mirror of where I am at any given moment. I'm a slow learner!
-
Recent Review of "The Sun Singer"
"Now you can see that after suggesting the possibility of putting this novel into a category, I have in fact placed it in several different pigeonholes. It is that kind of novel--a slippery, chamelon kind of fiction the likes of which you may not have previously experienced. Dare to take a trip with Robert Adams if you will."
--Caine Campbell (no relation) in Living Jackson Magazine, September/October 2006
No fan of deadlines, I began part-time work on the novel while employed as a technical writer at a widely known computer company. The words came slowly even after that company was bought out and my division was closed.
I then went to work as a technical writer for a new computer company that stayed in business for a little over a year before it was taken over by venture capitalists and subsequently closed. Meanwhile, I was still following my protagonist, young Robert Adams, from Illinois out to the high country of Montana as he searched for new answers to old questions.
Ultimately--after doing computer work out of my house for a while--I landed at another computer company while Robert Adams was fighting bad guys in a faraway world of magic.
This company lasted about five years. But it fell on hard times and was closed down while Robert Adams was discovering his own true nature. His journey represented continuity--from a writer's point of view--and it became clear that my snail's pace writing was intentional in a therapeutic way as fortunes and finances in the real world ebbed and flowed.
Fortunately or unfortunately, I was hired by another computer company and told as I walked in the door that anyone who had seen as many computer companies fail as I had obviously had the kind of experience they were looking for. My division was phased out 365 days later due to the usual business turn-arounds and other factors.
The time was right to polish up the novel again and send it out the door. Over a 20-year period, some 120 publishers and agents had told me that they didn't know how to market an adult-level novel with a teenage protagonist. Actually, I don't either. And it doesn't matter because the 1981-2004 phase of my therapy was complete.
Now, as I near the end of a 200,000-word second novel, one that I began in 1990, I'm discovering there's more to this snail's pace form of therapeutic writing than I realized as the first copies of The Sun Singer arrived on my doorstep: The novel itself is not the true intent of my labor; it's a byproduct of my on-going discovery of self.
That is to say, when I begin a novel, I don't yet know enough to complete it. I know where it's going, but not how it will get there. While I would very much like to write at rabbit speed or even race horse speed, my inner work won't permit it. The writing is always a mirror of where I am at any given moment. I'm a slow learner!
-
Recent Review of "The Sun Singer"
"Now you can see that after suggesting the possibility of putting this novel into a category, I have in fact placed it in several different pigeonholes. It is that kind of novel--a slippery, chamelon kind of fiction the likes of which you may not have previously experienced. Dare to take a trip with Robert Adams if you will."
--Caine Campbell (no relation) in Living Jackson Magazine, September/October 2006
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